Voters Muddle French Politics

June 18, 1988|By Julian Nundy, Special to The Tribune.

PARIS — Thirteen months from now, the Paris sky will be ablaze with the biggest fireworks and laser show the world has ever seen.

The show will cap ceremonies marking the bicentennial of the French Revolution. That, and the appearance of the new Beaujolais wine on the third Thursday of November, are among the few predictions that can be made about France with any certainty.

For the country has come through one of the strangest political experiences of modern times, one that has confounded the most adept pundits and fashioned a whole new landscape.

Over the last eight weeks, on four separate Sundays, the French went to the polls to elect a new president and a new parliament; but the signals they sent to their leaders were confusing and contradictory.

After the first round of the presidential election on April 24, the message seemed clear: While President Francois Mitterrand was bound for certain re-election to a second seven-year term, he would rule a France where the extreme right-wing National Front was in the ascendency, having won a record 14.4 percent of the vote, and the once-influential Communist Party, with less than 7 percent, slipped into oblivion.

Seven weeks later, in the second round of the National Assembly elections, the National Front, whose countrywide support suddenly dropped 5 percent, was to return only one deputy to parliament. The Communists, on the other hand, jumped 5 points and retained 27 of their outgoing 35 deputies.

The strength of the Marxists tipped the balance of power in favor of the Left, since neither Mitterrand`s Socialists nor the conservatives were able to win an absolute majority. The Socialists got 276 seats, 13 short of a majority, while 271 seats went to the center-right alliance of the Rally for the Republic and the Union for French Democracy.

Mitterrand dissolved the assembly and called legislative elections in May to secure parliamentary backing for his new prime minister, Michel Rocard, a fellow Socialist and presidential hopeful. Opinion polls had predicted the Socialists would win a landslide. They were wrong.

If there was a message, it seemed to be that many in France were bored with voting. In the first round of the parliamentary elections on June 5, 34 percent of registered voters stayed home; 30 percent did so in the final round. Both figures were records.

Those voters who did turn out were split, as always, 50-50 between Left and Right.

Mitterrand has offered to share power with the center and the democratic Right (as distinct from the fascist National Front). His supporters say the offer is aimed at ending political zigzags and at strengthening the center against the extremes, leading in effect to a form of government by consensus. Mitterrand and Rocard have so far failed to obtain any commitments from centrist groups in parliament, and many analysts doubt they will for some time to come.

In the meantime, however, the Rocard government has received a grudging pledge from the Communist Party that it will not bring the government down in a no-confidence vote, although it has said it will fight government policies it does not agree with.

Another development that should ensure the Rocard Cabinet a degree of longevity was the creation Wednesday of a separate parliamentary faction by about 40 deputies of the Center for Social Democrats. This center-right party, led by Pierre Mehaignerie, a minister in the last government, was a major component of the Union for French Democracy.

With a separate group, Mehaignerie will find it easier to vote independently. Many analysts expect centrist deputies to swing behind the government on occasions where Socialist positions are close to theirs.

This scenario, in which the Rocard government may pick up votes from Communists in some parliamentary debates and from centrists in others, has been dubbed ``variable geometry`` by the French press. It is expected to guarantee the government`s survival through the fall and until new alliances can be struck.